The Truth About Love and War
by daemanals
Summary: The much-awaited sequel to UNDISCLOSED DESIRES.  What befalls Pansy after that fateful night in the dungeons? "It is amazing, Pansy, that one can feel so much pain and yet live."


**_Disclaimer: _**_I do not claim to own the magical world of Harry Potter or the wonderful characters that invaded the mind of JK Rowling._

**_Author's Note:_**_ I apologize to have kept you all waiting for so long. But at last, due to many requests, the story of Pansy and Harry, started in _Undisclosed Desires_ continues..._

**Prologue**

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne soit à douleur

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit meurtri

Il n'y a pas d'amour dont on ne soit flétri

…

Il n'y a pas d'amour qui ne vive de pleurs

_Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux_

_Mais c'est notre amour à tous deux_

_Aragon_

(There is no love that is not suffering/ There is no love from which one does not bruise/ There is no love from which one does not whither/ There is no love that does not live by tears/ There is no happy love; But it is our love (both of ours))

_Never fall in love_ she had said. Every night as her mother tucked her into bed she repeated this phrase. It became her lullaby, her bedtime story, and eventually her mantra. Never fall in love. It was a promise the girl made to herself. Instead of a little girl dreaming of prince charmings on white horses, she was teaching herself how to be self-sufficient and practicing her manipulation of men. By age ten, she could get every boy—and man for that matter—to bend to her will. She didn't cry or scream; instead, she smiled and batted her eyelashes and blinded their judgment with her girlish whiles.

She watched her mother suffer her love. She followed the girl's father, step for step in his path, even though it was slowly killing her. He hit her when his temper was too much for him and he insulted her whenever he was unsatisfied, which was often. The physical and emotional abuse slowly ate away at her mother's charm. The look that would make men fall at her feet slowly faded from her eyes until it was no more. The small jokes and the soft whispers got lost on their way to her tongue until her mind could no longer even remember how to form something seductive. Her mother's heart, which once smiled at animals and children and swooned when given a red rose, became cold as ice. She had given all of her love to her husband and he had battered and beat it until it was nothing more than a whisper.

So, the girl followed her mother's advice and promised herself that she would never fall in love. Men were nothing but another subject to her, one in which she was well studied. She knew exactly what it took to please them, to tease them and to get them to do everything she wanted them to. With a steamy glance or a brush of her breath on their ear, they would bend to her will. Even the greatest men could crumble at the whim of a practiced seductress. She had played the game well for seventeen years, in fact she had never lost, until that fateful night her seventh year at Hogwarts.

Harry Potter had made love to her. It was something that Pansy was still mulling over in her head hours after dawn, hours after the fighting had recommenced and just shortly after someone had found her in her sanctuary in the dungeons and had informed her that the battle had ended at last. She was now standing on the grounds, the skeleton of Hogwarts several meters behind her, glittering in the twilight of this new day. As the sun set, throwing the blood stains and the corpses into the dark abyss, hiding the ugly truth of this glorious victory, Pansy pulled her cloak tighter around her and tried to damper the emotions flooding through her shivering frame. Ministry officials and professors were rushing here and there, the chaos was nearly unbearable. Even though Pansy had managed to distance herself, every voice, every sound that broke through her reverie was a constant reminder of what had transpired in the dungeons between her and Potter.

With the sun setting, Pansy recalled more than ever the words of her mother: _never fall in love._ Pansy had never asked her why, she had never needed to. She had watched how her mother's _love_ kept her faithfully beside her husband, despite his malice, despite his abuse, despite the fact that it stripped her until she was nothing more than a shadow in his wake.

Pansy had never been able to describe it before, the way Harry Potter made her feel. Every bone in her despised him, for absolutely no reason at all. Every word that came from his lips irked her into a ferocious temper. Since the day she had met him, she had described Harry Potter as her enemy. She could never explain why she reacted the way she did, in fact, when he was near, she was unable to think at all. Every malicious word that spewed from her mouth was like a reflex, every glare a habit. After last night, however, Pansy understood the last seven years perfectly. Her reactions to Harry hadn't been caused by her hatred for the Wonder Boy, but rather by her unfamiliar emotions concerning him.

Harry was handsome, that was indisputable, and he had, of course, the power and the fame that makes every woman swoon. Pansy had accepted all of this and had admitted, only secretly of course, that Harry was attractive and that he had a certain rugged charm about him. Now, however, after their whirlwind night of love-making, Pansy was starting to re-examine everything the name 'Harry Potter' stirred within her.

As the pink and orange tint of the April sky began to be swallowed by the dark navy of the night, Pansy realized that she was in love with Harry Potter. Now, the word 'love' is a very fickle word and it meant something different for everyone. For Pansy Parkinson, it meant the one person she couldn't charm, the one person she couldn't look at as 'just another man' and the one person that made her act in a way she couldn't explain, no matter how hard she tried. For Pansy, this person was Harry Potter. In his presence, her body was aflame, her temper was on edge, her mind going a million miles an hour and her words and actions completely led by her emotions. Since Harry had left her in the classroom without so much as a 'goodbye' she had been tossing the question around in her head over and over: _Why had she made love to Harry Potter? _Now, as the sun set on one of the bloodiest days in wizarding history and quieted the echoing screams of death, as the darkness fell around them, allowing the survivors the shield that they needed to conceal their tears, Pansy could draw only one conclusion; she was in love with the Boy-Who-Lived and had been since the moment she had met him.

A hand fell lightly on her shoulder. "Parkinson," a nasally voice said softly near her ear. Pansy turned slightly and gave a small smile as her gaze landed on familiar eyes.

"Professor." Her reply was more a relieved sigh than anything.

Although Snape's face gave nothing away, the tiny glint that passed through his eyes showed Pansy that he was glad to see her alive and well and, Pansy scoffed inside, he was probably the only one. He took his hand away and crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze shifting to look out over the landscape Pansy had been staring at for a while now. The last rays of sun were disappearing behind the hills and the first few stars could be seen in the darkening sky.

"Are you alright?" he asked at last.

She shrugged nonchalantly. "I'm better than most, I suppose," she finally answered, her voice emotionless. She turned to look at him, studying his long nose, his pointed chin, he graying black hair. "Professor, may I ask you something?"

He nodded, aware she was watching him. She looked away from him again; she knew his face would carefully hide any reaction to her question, so all she had were his words anyway. "Have you ever been in love?" The question was quiet, nothing more than a sigh carried on the night breeze.

Several minutes passed in silence, the urgent voices in the background continued, the hustle and bustle of adults, the tears of the remaining youth, but between the two snakes, there was nothing but contemplation. "I was."

"Did it hurt?"

"Like hell."

Both gave a small smile then that neither saw. Pansy continued to stand there, staring at nothing in particular long after Snape slithered away from her to attend to more important matters. Slowly, the noise faded around her and the silence grew louder, but Pansy's thoughts were the only thing she heard. _Never fall in love_. Her mother had understood the pain of love. Her mother's love had taken everything away from her and left her a powerless woman with a cold heart. Now, however, Pansy began to see the truth of her mother's words in another way.

There is a truth about love, an unattractive truth that they never tell you. It is pain. Love leaves you weak and vulnerable. It has the ability to give you everything and then take it all away. With it, you are on top of the world, but without it you are nothing at all. It leaves you unable to control your emotions. It makes you dependant and takes away your ability to be alone anymore. It means having to compromise and share intimate secrets. It means putting all of your trust in another human being. Most of all, though, love leaves you open to heartache.

Pansy finally turned from the landscape before her to face the castle, the place that had once been a safe haven, but now, in her eyes, was hell on Earth. Slowly, she made her way back to the thinning mass. Everyone was in someone's arms; parents held their wounded children, friends hugged friends, lovers grasped to each other for dear life. Ministry officials were trying to disperse the survivors and send them on their way. The statements had been made, the cadavers had been hauled away and the remaining Death Eaters taken to Azkaban. Now all that remained were shattered hearts and unshed tears. Tonight in the solace of the darkness, those tears would rain and the hearts would struggle to begin to mend. In time, the world would begin to spin again and those that hurt now would patch themselves up and attempt to grasp the remains of their tattered lives. For those that had loved and lost however, the remaining days in their lives would be unforgiving and cruel. No matter how many smiles and laughs broke the façade of sadness later down the road, there would forever be a hole in their heart. Some hearts would turn to ice in order to protect themselves from that sort of pain again. Some hearts would build a wall, keeping out others in order to preserve the memory of those lost. The other hearts would attempt to love again, only to find that the second love is more painful than the first; it leaves you more dependent, more vulnerable and opens you up to many more possibilities of being hurt. After all, every heartache hurts a little bit more. To survive the loss of one's love—whether through death or separation—is difficult the first time, but more than once….

With Snape's assistance, Pansy made her way to the outer grounds where she Apparated to Parkinson Manor. The stone house was silent and still, haunted in the glow of the full moon. Every door she opened creaked and every footfall was heavy and unforgiving. Finally Pansy found her mother alone, sitting on her balcony. Her head was bowed and she did not even raise her gaze to see Pansy when she stepped through the door. With trepid steps, Pansy approached her mother and, upon reaching her, crouched down in front of her, reaching out to grasp her folded hands.

"Mother?"

Mrs. Parkinson raised her gaze, her eyes weary and hollow. "Pansy, I'm so glad to see you are alright." Pansy nodded in response, she had expected no more than those words of relief for her mother. Pansy knew her mother loved her, but she also understood that Mrs. Parkinson was unable to express her emotions anymore.

Pansy took a deep breath, praying for some courage. Finally, she dared to ask her mother, "Are you alright?"

Mrs. Parkinson was surprised at the question. "Of course, dear."

"It's just…I know how much you loved father."

Her mother, to Pansy's surprise, gave a small smile. She reached out a frail hand and cupped Pansy's chin. "Your father's arrest and his impending life sentence in Azkaban do not faze me, Pansy. I am married to your father, but that does not mean I love him."

Pansy pulled back, startled. "You don't?" Her mother shook her head. "But…all these years I thought that the reason you remained was because you loved him. I thought your warning to me was because you did not want me to lose myself, you did not want me to be hurt like you had been."

"This is true," she admitted. "I did not ever want to see you suffer as I had. It is true that I have been hurt, Pansy. I have experienced pain beyond any imagination, my heart has grown cold and I have buried the woman I once was before love. I would never wish this upon anyone, yet alone you, my daughter. However, I did not become this way because of your father's maltreatment of me. I was not blindly following him because I loved him and had I known that this was the conclusion your mind had drawn up I would have rectified your belief. I remained with your father for you, in order to give you a good life and because, when I married him, there was really nothing left that this world could do to me—nothing that would have any effect on me, anyway.

"I have loved, Pansy, this is true. I was young, very young, but even to this day I have no doubt that it was the real thing." Her eyes lit up at this, if ever so much. "I will spare you the details, my love, for they would forever distance you from me. This love of mine, however, could not be. Not in the reality that you and I share. I wished upon every star and hoped against all hope that our love would survive, but my companion did not share this faith. She saw the world as it really was and before I could convince her otherwise, she was gone. I did not think that there was any conceivable way I could still be alive after the way my heart broke. It is amazing, Pansy, that one can feel so much pain and yet live."

She reached out and grasped Pansy's face, forcing her eyes to meet hers. "I can see, though, my girl, that perhaps you understand what I mean very well. Your heart cries though your eyes shed no tears. Your mind screams in misery though your lips are sealed shut. Your heart is breaking and soon after, like my own, if will freeze. I know this feeling, _mon cœur_, I have lived it. Did he leave you too?"

Pansy's mind was still reeling from everything her mother had just revealed to her. The world was crashing down around them, chaos was everywhere. Loved ones were dead or being thrown in Azkaban, the ministry was in ruins, the wizarding world traumatized, yet Pansy and her mother, for the first time ever, were bonding. The subject however, was one that neither had wished to ever experience. Pansy nodded.

"You're wrong, my love," Mrs. Parkinson said, releasing her face. "Harry Potter did not leave you, he died; I cannot tell you, though, which is worse."

"How did you know?" Pansy's voice cracked and she was ashamed to discover it was because she was fighting all the emotions inside of her, begging them to bury themselves, doing everything she could to keep them from showing in her face.

Her mother gave a sad smile. "When our feelings for someone are strong and indescribable, even when they feel like hatred, I have discovered that they are, more often than not, love. For years you have gone on tirades about the Boy-Who-Lived at every opportunity. From the way you spoke, most would think You-Know-Who himself had possessed you. I, however, knew that the burning emotions inside you were not that of hatred, but of something quite the contrary."

"I did not realize it until last night."

"I suppose it did not matter how much I warned you against love; no matter how much you hide, if it wants to, it will always find you. We do not ask for love, Pansy, nor do we even have to look for it. Love, my dear, will find you. It does not care if it is inconvenient, it does not care if it is impossible, it does not care if it will mess up your entire life, it will find you. I am so sorry, Pansy. In a million years I would rather you never know love than have had to suffer its pain."

There is a truth about love, an ugly truth that no one ever speaks of. Yes, love can be wonderful. It can show you a world you have never seen before and it can make life all the more beautiful without explanation. Love can make you a better person, it can give you a companion for life and it can give you everything you never knew you needed. Love, however, can also be cruel and unbearable. It can leave you weak and unaware. It can make you blindly follow in another's footsteps without paying any attention to yourself. Love can tear people apart as often as it can bring them together. And the loss of love—whether by death or choice—can be a pain that surpasses all. Even at its best, love is just as cruel as it is kind. That is the truth that no one speaks. That is the truth that no one dwells on. And that is the truth that, when love comes, no matter how hard you run, you will eventually have to face it.

**Author's Note: **I hope that you all enjoyed it! If you can spare a moment, please comment, I do relish them so (the good and the constructively critical).


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